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Lessons in Efficiency from Walking Dead: 400 Days

I’ll be honest, when I heard that Telltale was releasing 400 Days, The Walking Dead’s first official DLC (excluding the episodes, of course), I may have squeed a little. OK, maybe a lot. Even though I was a little saddened that we were seeing the world through the eyes of a handful of new characters, I was still happy to be stepping back into Kirkman’s zombie-verse, as depicted by Telltale. And once I played it, I wasn’t disappointed.

For any of you that loved The Walking Dead, do yourself a favor and pick up 400 Days. It’s a handful of stories of brand new characters, including a long-haired stoner, an escaped convict, a former drug addict, a young kid on the run and a big sister trying to soften a hard world for her younger sibling. And while the DLC might only be a few hours long, Telltale shows that they’re as efficient as ever in crafting memorable, fully realized characters in such a short span of time.

What amazed me most about 400 Days is just how invested I was in brand new characters, even though you really only spend about half an hour (or less) with each of them. It makes me wish that other studios would start taking notes about how to craft characters, how to introduce them to us right when their lives change, and how to make us identify with them right off the bat. At just $5, the game will easily return what you spend.

3 thoughts on “Lessons in Efficiency from Walking Dead: 400 Days”

Man this was the perfect execution of DLC. The stories were all interesting, and they were nice bite size chunks of gameplay that you could just sit down for 20 minutes and then not feel bad about stopping and coming back for more later. Well worth the $5, and it’s got me excited for this new season.

Have to agree, it’s amazing how quickly you start to like (or hate) some of the characters here. The DLC seemed like they just threw together a bunch of situations they couldn’t make fit into the original game, and they were all great. Would have liked a bit more cross-over with the original game, but for 5 bucks, you can’t really complain with the quality of the product.